Management of members of social network conversations

ABSTRACT

Disclosed are some implementations of systems, apparatus, methods and computer program products for managing members of online social network conversations. A user can access a list of members of an online social network conversation by interacting with a user interface element of a graphical user interface (GUI). The list of members can be modified directly via interaction with the list.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material,which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has noobjection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentor the patent disclosure as it appears in the United States Patent andTrademark Office patent file or records but otherwise reserves allcopyright rights whatsoever.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This patent document generally relates to database systems andtechniques associated with social networking systems. More specifically,this patent document discloses techniques for using and maintaining dataobjects in a database system to manage members of social mediaconversations.

BACKGROUND

“Cloud computing” services provide shared resources, software, andinformation to computers and other devices upon request. In cloudcomputing environments, software can be accessible over the Internetrather than installed locally on in-house computer systems. Cloudcomputing typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamicallyscalable and often virtualized resources. Technological details can beabstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, orcontrol over, the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supportsthem.

Users today can communicate with one another using a variety ofcommunication platforms and social networking systems. Through thesechannels, a user may compose a message and share the message withselected individuals or groups.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The included drawings are for illustrative purposes and serve only toprovide examples of possible structures and operations for the disclosedsystems, apparatus, methods and computer program products for leveragingand managing assessment environments in an assessment hub. Thesedrawings in no way limit any changes in form and detail that may be madeby one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope ofthe disclosed implementations.

FIG. 1 shows a system diagram of an example of a database system 100 ina social networking environment, in accordance with someimplementations.

FIG. 2A shows a graphical user interface (GUI) 200 generated on adisplay device of a client machine in a social network environment, inaccordance with one or more implementations.

FIG. 2B shows a GUI 230 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations.

FIG. 2C shows a GUI 230 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations.

FIG. 2D shows a GUI 280 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations.

FIG. 2E shows a GUI 284 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations.

FIG. 2F shows a GUI 290 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations.

FIG. 3 shows an example of a method 300 for providing a conversationmembership interface, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a method for modifying the membership of aconversation, in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 5A shows a block diagram of an example of an environment 10 inwhich an on-demand database service can be used in accordance with someimplementations.

FIG. 5B shows a block diagram of an example of some implementations ofelements of FIG. 5A and various possible interconnections between theseelements.

FIG. 6A shows a system diagram of an example of architectural componentsof an on-demand database service environment 900, in accordance withsome implementations.

FIG. 6B shows a system diagram further illustrating an example ofarchitectural components of an on-demand database service environment,in accordance with some implementations.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Examples of systems, apparatus, methods and computer program productsaccording to the disclosed implementations are described in thissection. These examples are being provided solely to add context and aidin the understanding of the disclosed implementations. It will thus beapparent to one skilled in the art that implementations may be practicedwithout some or all of these specific details. In other instances,certain operations have not been described in detail to avoidunnecessarily obscuring implementations. Other applications arepossible, such that the following examples should not be taken asdefinitive or limiting either in scope or setting.

In the following detailed description, references are made to theaccompanying drawings, which form a part of the description and in whichare shown, by way of illustration, specific implementations. Althoughthese implementations are described in sufficient detail to enable oneskilled in the art to practice the disclosed implementations, it isunderstood that these examples are not limiting, such that otherimplementations may be used and changes may be made without departingfrom their spirit and scope. For example, the operations of methodsshown and described herein are not necessarily performed in the orderindicated. It should also be understood that the methods may includemore or fewer operations than are indicated. In some implementations,operations described herein as separate operations may be combined.Conversely, what may be described herein as a single operation may beimplemented in multiple operations.

Online social networks are increasingly becoming a common way tofacilitate communication among people who can be recognized as users ofa social networking system. Some online social networks can beimplemented in various settings, including organizations, e.g.,enterprises such as companies or business partnerships, academicinstitutions, or groups within such an organization. For instance,Chatter® can be used by employee users in a division of a businessorganization to share data, communicate, and collaborate with each otherfor various purposes.

Various implementations described or referenced herein are directed todifferent systems, apparatus, methods and computer-readable storagemedia for managing members of conversations conducted on an onlinesocial network, also referred to herein as a social networking system.One example of an online social network is Chatter®, provided bysalesforce.com, inc. of San Francisco, Calif. salesforce.com, inc. is aprovider of social networking services, customer relationship management(CRM) services and other database management services. These variousservices can be provided in a cloud computing environment, for example,in the context of a multi-tenant database system. Different communitiesof users can be created and managed in such an environment withouthaving to install software locally, that is, on computing devices ofusers accessing the communities. While the disclosed implementations areoften described with reference to Chatter®, those skilled in the artshould understand that the disclosed systems, apparatus, methods andcomputer-readable storage media can be implemented in the context of oneor more other social networking systems, such as Facebook®, LinkedIn®,Twitter®, Google+®, Yammer® and Jive®.

A user of an online social network may share (e.g., post) a message withanother individual, group, or community of individuals to initiate aconversation. For example, a user of Chatter® may share a message withan individual or group of individuals by “mentioning” the individual orgroup using @individual or @group. The user who initiated theconversation may be referred to as the “author” of the message, whilethe individual, group, or community with whom the message is shared maybe referred to as the recipient of the message. Therefore, the membersof the conversation initially include the author and the recipient(s) ofthe message.

A member of the conversation may also add new members other than therecipient to the conversation. For example, a member of the conversationmay copy (e.g., cc) an individual or group of individuals on either theoriginal message or a comment on the message. As another example, amember of the conversation may add a new member to the conversation bymentioning an individual or group of individuals, either with or withoutan accompanying comment.

As new members are added to the conversation and members comment on theoriginal message, the feeds of members of the conversation can becomeextremely lengthy. Moreover, mentions of new members that do not includeaccompanying text can add to the length of the conversation withoutsubstantively adding to the conversation, resulting in unnecessaryclutter in the feeds of the members. For these reasons, it can bedifficult for a member of a conversation to ascertain who isparticipating in the conversation. This can result in frustration andwasted time spent reading through feeds to determine who has been addedto the conversation.

Some implementations of the disclosed systems, apparatus, methods andcomputer program products are configured for managing members of anonline social network conversation. This may be accomplished, in part,through the generation of a conversation membership list that can beaccessed by conversation members. By enabling a conversation member toaccess the list via a graphical user interface (GUI), the member caneasily ascertain those individuals, groups, or communities that willreceive a message or comment that the member chooses to share with othermembers of the conversation.

By way of illustration, John is an engineer within an organization,Simple Software Solutions, Inc. John is working on a project with otherindividuals within his team. John decides to initiate a conversation bysharing a message with another individual within his team, Emily,regarding the project. Emily then mentions individuals Tim and Carol inrelation to the conversation. Emily and Tim each choose to comment onthe message. Later, Tim mentions Jeff and Michelle in relation to theconversation.

Several days later, Emily has a new idea to share with John and returnsto the conversation. Since her feed has become quite lengthy sinceJohn's initial message, Emily is having difficulty ascertaining who is amember of the conversation. Emily accesses a conversation membershipinterface using her desktop computer to view a list of the members ofthe conversation. Emily then submits a comment and mentions George toadd him to the conversation.

George accesses the list of the members of the conversation via aconversation membership interface using his laptop. Since he is notinterested in this conversation, he removes himself from theconversation by interacting with the conversation membership interface.

In some online social networks, users can access one or more informationfeeds, which include information updates presented as items or entriesin the feed. Such a feed item can include a single information update ora collection of individual information updates. A feed item can includevarious types of data including character-based data, audio data, imagedata and/or video data. An information feed can be displayed in agraphical user interface (GUI) on a display device such as the displayof a computing device as described below. The information updates caninclude various social network data from various sources and can bestored in an on-demand database service environment. In someimplementations, the disclosed methods, apparatus, systems, andcomputer-readable storage media may be configured or designed for use ina multi-tenant database environment.

In some implementations, an online social network may allow a user tofollow data objects in the form of records such as cases, accounts, oropportunities, in addition to following individual users and groups ofusers. The “following” of a record stored in a database allows a user totrack the progress of that record. Updates to the record, also referredto herein as changes to the record, are one type of information updatethat can occur and be noted on an information feed such as a record feedor a news feed of a user subscribed to the record. Examples of recordupdates include field changes in the record, updates to the status of arecord, as well as the creation of the record itself. Some records arepublicly accessible, such that any user can follow the record, whileother records are private, for which appropriate securityclearance/permissions are a prerequisite to a user following the record.

Information updates can include various types of updates, which may ormay not be linked with a particular record. For example, informationupdates can be user-submitted messages or can otherwise be generated inresponse to user actions or in response to events. Examples of messagesinclude: posts, comments, indications of a user's personal preferencessuch as “likes” and “dislikes”, updates to a user's status, uploadedfiles, and hyperlinks to social network data or other network data suchas various documents and/or web pages on the Internet. Posts can includealpha-numeric or other character-based user inputs such as words,phrases, statements, questions, emotional expressions, and/or symbols.Comments generally refer to responses to posts, such as words, phrases,statements, answers, questions, and reactionary emotional expressionsand/or symbols. Multimedia data can be included in, linked with, orattached to a post or comment. For example, a post can include textualstatements in combination with a JPEG image or animated image. A like ordislike can be submitted in response to a particular post or comment.Examples of uploaded files include presentations, documents, multimediafiles, and the like.

Users can follow a record by subscribing to the record, as mentionedabove. Users can also follow other entities such as other types of dataobjects, other users, and groups of users. Feed tracked updatesregarding such entities are one type of information update that can bereceived and included in the user's news feed. Any number of users canfollow a particular entity and thus view information updates pertainingto that entity on the users' respective news feeds. In some socialnetworks, users may follow each other by establishing connections witheach other, sometimes referred to as “friending” one another. Byestablishing such a connection, one user may be able to see informationgenerated by, generated about, or otherwise associated with anotheruser. For instance, a first user may be able to see information postedby a second user to the second user's personal social network page. Oneimplementation of such a personal social network page is a user'sprofile page, for example, in the form of a web page representing theuser's profile. In one example, when the first user is following thesecond user, the first user's news feed can receive a post from thesecond user submitted to the second user's profile feed, also referredto herein as the user's “wall,” which is one example of an informationfeed displayed on the user's profile page.

In some implementations, an information feed may be specific to a groupof users of an online social network. For instance, a group of users maypublish a news feed. Members of the group may view and post to thisgroup feed in accordance with a permissions configuration for the feedand the group. Information updates in a group context can also includechanges to group status information.

In some implementations, when data such as posts or comments input fromone or more users are submitted to an information feed for a particularuser, group, object, or other construct within an online social network,an email notification or other type of network communication may betransmitted to all users following the user, group, or object inaddition to the inclusion of the data as a feed item in one or morefeeds, such as a user's profile feed, a news feed, or a record feed. Insome online social networks, the occurrence of such a notification islimited to the first instance of a published input, which may form partof a larger conversation. For instance, a notification may betransmitted for an initial post, but not for comments on the post. Insome other implementations, a separate notification is transmitted foreach such information update.

Some implementations of the disclosed systems, apparatus, methods andcomputer-readable storage media are configured to provide communities ofusers in an online social network. Such communities are to bedifferentiated from “groups” of users in Chatter®, described in greaterdetail below. That is, a community of users can exist as an entity apartfrom and in addition to any group or groups of such users in the socialnetwork, although some of the rights and restrictions provided to acommunity member may be the same or similar as those provided to amember of a group. In some implementations, a community can be definedas a secure space for different stake-holders of an organization, suchas employees, customers and partners of the organization, to collaboratewith one another by accessing shared data, interacting withcommunity-centric tasks and business processes, and using conversationalservices such as chat sessions, feed-based communication, and privatemessaging. The community can be structured and maintained as a public orprivate space for users having different relationships with theorganization, so the users can converse and collaborate in an effectivemanner. The users can be of different types, such as internal orexternal, and/or the users can have different roles, such as employee,customer or partner, with such types and roles defining a user'srelationship with the organization. For example, a partner can be anentity external to an organization that sells services and/or providessupport on behalf of an employee, who is an internal user of theorganization. Multiple communities can be implemented, some affiliatedwith different organizations, and a user can navigate across thecommunities in a seamless fashion from the user's perspective.

Each community can be structured so a community leader, systemadministrator or other user having appropriate security clearance candefine rules governing community membership and privileges governing: i)access and use of various community data, ii) the ability to take actionand cause events to occur in relation to the community, and iii) thevisibility of users to each other. These various privileges can bedefined and customized at a granular level, for instance, with differentaccess rights and restrictions configured on a per-user or per-type ofuser basis, on a per-data item or per-type of data basis, and/or on aper-action or per-type of action basis.

In some instances, a user can have different user profiles for differentcommunities. In other instances, a user can have a primary user profileand can select which fields of the profile are to be exposed to eachcommunity of which the user is a member. In some implementations, auser's community profile has a child-parent relationship with theprimary profile and is tailored to inherit data from selected fields ofthe primary profile.

In some instances, a community can be open, as is often the case withpublic communities, in that there are no or minimal restrictions onusers to access data, initiate actions, and view other communitymembers' profiles, regardless of user type or role with respect to anorganization. Thus, in a public community, employees, customers andpartners of an organization affiliated with the community can freelyview community data and each other's profiles, follow the same objects,and converse using the same feeds, by virtue of being members of thesame community.

In some implementations, a user can gain access to a community bylogging in to the social networking system hosting the community. Inother implementations, the same user identity (ID), such as a login nameor email address assigned to a given user, can be used by a user todirectly log in and thus gain access to a community, that is, withoutrequiring the user to separately log in to the social networking systemhosting the community.

In some implementations, full collaboration in a community is possibleregardless of user type or role. Internal and external users can beprovided with full access or the same level of restricted access to thesame feeds available through the community, and such users can view eachother's walls and follow each other. The terms “information feed” and“feed” are used interchangeably herein and generally refer to acombination (e.g., a list) of feed items or entries with various typesof information and data. Such feed items can be stored and maintained inone or more database tables, e.g., as rows in the table(s), that can beaccessed to retrieve relevant information to be presented as part of adisplayed feed. The term “feed item” (or feed element) refers to an itemof information such as a post submitted by a user, which can bepresented in the feed. Feed items of information about a user can bepresented in a user's profile feed of the database, while feed items ofinformation about a record can be presented in a record feed in thedatabase, by way of example. A profile feed and a record feed areexamples of different information feeds. A second user following a firstuser and a record can receive the feed items associated with the firstuser and the record for display in the second user's news feed, which isanother type of information feed. In some implementations, the feeditems from any number of followed users and records can be combined intoa single information feed of a particular user.

As examples, a feed item can be a message, such as a user-generated postof text data, or a feed tracked update to a record or profile, such as achange to a field of the record. Feed tracked updates are described ingreater detail below. A feed can be a combination of messages and feedtracked updates. Messages include text created by a user, and mayinclude other data as well. Examples of messages include posts, userstatus updates, and comments. Messages can be created for a user'sprofile or for a record. Posts can be created by various users,potentially any user, although some restrictions can be applied. As anexample, posts can be made to a wall section of a user's profile page(which can include a number of recent posts) or a section of a recordthat includes multiple posts. The posts can be organized inchronological order when displayed in a graphical user interface (GUI),for instance, on the user's profile page, as part of the user's profilefeed. In contrast to a post, a user status update changes a status of auser and can be made by that user or an administrator. A record can alsohave a status, the update of which can be provided by an owner of therecord or other users having suitable write access permissions to therecord. The owner can be a single user, multiple users, or a group. Inone implementation, there is only one status for a record.

In some implementations, a comment can be made on any feed item. In someimplementations, comments are organized as a list explicitly tied to aparticular feed tracked update, post, or status update. In someimplementations, comments may not be listed in the first layer (in ahierarchal sense) of feed items, but listed as a second layer branchingfrom a particular first layer feed item.

In accordance with various implementations, a conversation membermanagement interface enables users to access a list of members of anonline social network conversation. The list is modifiable viainteraction with the interface. Therefore, members of a conversation caneasily ascertain the members of a conversation without scrolling throughtheir feed.

In some implementations, user feeds are filtered to remove feed itemsthat merely pertain to the addition of users to an online social networkconversation. Therefore, the feeds of the members of a conversation mayremain uncluttered by feed items that are not substantive.

Since feed items pertaining to a particular conversation may betransmitted to all individuals following a user, group, or object, feedsof these users may be impacted even if they are not members of aparticular conversation. In some implementations, followers of a user,group, or object may be treated as members of a conversation forpurposes of identifying individuals or groups who are receiving feeditems (e.g., posts, comments, mentions) pertaining to the conversationwithin their feeds. More particularly, feeds of the followers may befiltered to remove posts that pertain solely to the addition of newmembers to the conversation. In addition, a conversation membershipinterface may identify all individuals and/or groups who receive postspertaining to the conversation within their feeds. This larger list maybe maintained and accessed independently from the above-describedconversation members list that solely identifies members of theconversation.

These and other implementations may be embodied in various types ofhardware, software, firmware, and combinations thereof. For example,some techniques disclosed herein may be implemented, at least in part,by computer-readable media that include program instructions, stateinformation, etc., for performing various services and operationsdescribed herein. Examples of program instructions include both machinecode, such as produced by a compiler, and files containing higher-levelcode that may be executed by a computing device such as a server orother data processing apparatus using an interpreter. Examples ofcomputer-readable media include, but are not limited to, magnetic mediasuch as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape; optical media suchas CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical media; and hardware devices that arespecially configured to store program instructions, such as read-onlymemory (“ROM”) devices and random access memory (“RAM”) devices. Theseand other features of the disclosed implementations will be described inmore detail below with reference to the associated drawings.

FIG. 1 shows a system diagram of an example of a database system 100 ina social networking environment, in accordance with someimplementations. In FIG. 1, a social networking system 104 includes anynumber of computing devices such as servers 108 a and 108 b. The servers108 a and 108 b are in communication with one or more storage mediumsconfigured to store and maintain relevant data used to perform some ofthe techniques disclosed herein. In this example, the storage mediumsinclude one or more databases 112, which may each include one or moretables that include data records. The databases 112 can maintain userprofiles of users. Each profile can include information such as user ID,name, email address, phone number, and/or time zone. In someimplementations, the databases 112 can maintain information thatidentifies members of respective groups, communities, or conversations.This information can include, for example, lists of IDs of users,groups, and/or communities that are members of a conversation. By way ofexample, a “Conversation 1 Membership” table in databases 112 caninclude a list of IDs of users who are members of Conversation 1, a“Conversation 2 Membership” table can include a list of IDs of users whoare members of Conversation 2, and so forth.

In addition, in some implementations, the databases 112 are configuredto store privilege information identifying or specifying access rightsand restrictions of users according to various attributes such as aspecified user ID, type of user, role of user, type of community towhich the user belongs, and/or a particular organization on behalf ofwhich a community is maintained.

In FIG. 1, the social networking system servers 108 can be configured tomaintain one or more communities of users such as communities 128, 132and 136 by interacting with databases 112 to identify members of thosecommunities and privileges of members of a given community. Any numberof users such as users 140 a, 140 b and 140 c can be serviced by socialnetworking system 104. That is, any such users 140 can have user IDs andother relevant data such as user profiles maintained in socialnetworking system 104. By leveraging the information stored in storagemediums such as databases 112, communities 128, 132 and 136 of suchusers 140 can be defined. Thus, in this example, the community 128includes users 140 a, community 132 includes users 140 b, and community136 includes users 140 c and one of users 140 b. Thus, one of the users140 b is a member of both communities 132 and 136. When any such users140 log in directly to a community, bypassing login pages of socialnetworking system 104, or log in via social networking system 104 usinga suitable computing device such as a laptop, tablet or smartphone, suchusers can be allowed to access data and take one or more actionsavailable through social networking system 104 as permitted by therelevant privilege information.

In accordance with various implementations, a user may make a requestvia servers 108 a and 108 b to share a message by posting a message on acommunity feed of a community of which the user is a member. In someimplementations, a user may post a message on walls of other users. Inaddition, a user may follow users in association with a particularcommunity. Users that are members of a particular community may beautomatically registered as followers of other users within thecommunity. Therefore, messages shared with the community may appear inthe feed of each user within the community.

In FIG. 1, each of the communities 128, 132 and 136 is operated onbehalf of a different organization. In this example, community 128 isoperated on behalf of Org A, which in this example is Acme, Inc. Forexample, the users 140 a in community 128 may be employees, customersand/or partners of Acme, Inc. By the same token, the community 132 isoperated on behalf of Org B, which can be any type of organization asdescribed in greater detail below. The community 136 is maintained onbehalf of Org C. The various users in a given community can havedifferent relationships with the organization on behalf of which thecommunity is maintained. Thus, one or more of the users 140 b can be anemployee, customer or business partner of Org B. In this example, asmentioned above, one of the users 140 b is a member of both communities132 and 136. Thus, this user 140 b could be an employee of Org B and acustomer of Org C by way of example. While the communities 128, 132 and136 in this example are each operated on behalf of a differentorganization, communities may also be operated on behalf of the sameorganization.

In FIG. 1, each community 128, 132 and 136 often has one or more pagesof relevant community data maintained by social networking system 104,where such pages are accessible by a web browser program operating on auser's computing device. Thus, any user having access to a givencommunity as defined by data stored in the privileges information canload part or all of such pages for display on the user's computingdevice. In the example of FIG. 1, a community's page or pages isaccessible at a web domain such as a URL including an org valueidentifying the specific organization on behalf of which the communityis maintained. This org value can be a character such as a letter,number, symbol, or string of characters identifying the specificorganization with which the community is affiliated. Thus, pages orother social network data available to users 140 a in community 128 canbe accessed at a URL such as acme.force.com/community-acme1/. In thisexample of a URL, the string “acme” of “acme.force.com” can provide theorg value, which identifies Acme, Inc. by name. In some instances, the“acme” of “community-acme1” can provide the org value identifying Acme,Inc. Acme, Inc. can have other web pages available to the generalpublic, for example, at the URL acme.com, which is a different rootdomain than the acme.force.com address at which community-specific pagesare provided.

The page or pages maintained by the social networking system 104 forcommunity 132 can be accessed at the URLorgb.force.com/community-orgb1/. As in the example of Acme, Inc., the“orgb” of “orgb.force.com” or the “orgb” of “community-orgb1” can be theorg value identifying Org B. One or more pages maintained on behalf ofcommunity 136 can similarly be accessed and identified with org valuesat the URL orgc.force.com/communityorgc1/.

When a user 140 d directly logs in to a community using an appropriatelogin page at the community URL, and the user is identified as a memberof a particular community, the web browser program on the user'scomputing device can be automatically routed to access a page at the URLspecific to that user's community, such asacme.force.com/community-acme1/. For example, the page can include aninformation feed that includes messages shared by a member of thatcommunity via the social networking system. The user can choose tonavigate through additional pages accessible via the community orcommunities to which the user belongs.

In accordance with various implementations, the servers 108 areconfigured to maintain information that identifies members ofconversations conducted via the social networking system. Members of agiven conversation may access a list of members of the conversation viaa graphical user interface, as will be described in further detailbelow.

FIG. 2A shows a graphical user interface (GUI) 200 generated on adisplay device of a client machine in a social network environment, inaccordance with one or more implementations. In this example, socialnetwork system Chatter® 202 can be used by users within a group orcommunity to share data, communicate, and collaborate with each otherfor various purposes. In this example, user John Jacobson 204 is a Salesemployee within an organization, Pyramid Construction, Inc. As shown inthis example, John is a member of the group, Pyramid 206. Johnidentified a bug in the software that was recently updated and decidesto share a social media message with the head of the InformationTechnology (IT) group, Jane Johnson, to request assistance. The socialmedia message can be composed by the user prior to or after selection ofrecipients for the unshared social media message.

The social networking system obtains an indication of an intendedrecipient of an unshared social media message. For example, theindication of the intended recipient can include one or more letters ofthe recipient's first and/or last name. Where the intended recipient isa group of users, the indication can include one or more letters of thename of the group.

In this example, John types @Johnson as shown at 208 within userinterface element 210. The system processes the indication of theintended recipient of the unshared social media message to identify oneor more contacts. For example, the system may identify all possiblecontacts for which the identifier contains the letters “Johnson.”

The system provides a user interface element 212 for display at a clientdevice of the user. A user interface element can provide a suitableinterface for presenting information to a user. In some implementations,a user interface element enables a user to submit input to the systemand/or request information from the system. In this example, userinterface element 212 is a pop-up window. However, it is important tonote that a user interface element may be presented in another manner orformat. For example, a user interface element may include a list, menu,window, panel, or other type of user interface.

User interface element 212 includes a contact identifier for each of thecontacts. Each of the contacts is associated with a corresponding userprofile stored in a database of the database system. As shown in thisexample, a list presents suggested contacts including Jane Johnson andJeremy Johnson. Each of the contacts is user-selectable.

John hovers his mouse over the name “Jeremy Johnson” to select JeremyJohnson Once a user has selected a contact, the user may post a mediamessage to share the message with the selected contact(s).

FIG. 2B shows a GUI 230 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations. John Jacobson 262 types a message 234 indicating thepresence of a bug in the recent release. John then clicks on Share/Postuser interface element 236 and message 234 is shared with JeremyJohnson.

FIG. 2C shows a GUI 260 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations. As shown in FIG. 2C, GUI 260 presents a feed 262 ofJeremy Johnson, which includes multiple feed items. The message that hasbeen shared by John Jacobson will be included in the feed 262 of JeremyJohnson, as shown at 264. In this example, co-worker Mary Lin submits acomment 266 on the message 264. In addition, Mary Lin mentions anotherco-worker, Steve Stanfield, in conjunction with the comment 266, asshown at 268. Since Steve Stanfield has been added as a member of theconversation, Steve Stanfield can add additional members to theconversation. As shown in this example, Steve Stanfield mentions JakeClayton at 270 without submitting an associated comment. Since JakeClayton is now a member of the conversation, he can also add additionalmembers to the conversation. Jake Clayton then mentions Sarah Kline at272 without submitting an associated comment. As members are added viafurther mentions, the feed becomes more lengthy and it becomes moredifficult for a user to ascertain the identities of all of the membersof the conversation.

In accordance with various implementations, a conversation member mayaccess a list of all conversation members to quickly ascertain theidentities of the members of a conversation. An example of a userinterface configured to provide conversation member managementcapabilities will be described in further detail below with reference toFIGS. 2D and 2E

FIG. 2D shows a GUI 280 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations. In this example, GUI 280 includes user interfaceelement 282 configured to enable a user (e.g., conversation member) toaccess a conversation member management interface. User interfaceelement 282 can include, for example, a button, a hypertext link, amenu, or a window. In this example, user interface element 282 isidentified by “Members” text element that represents a hypertext link.To access the conversation member management interface, a user caninteract with user interface element 282. For example, the user canclick on user interface element 282 to access the conversation membermanagement interface. An example conversation member managementinterface will be described in further detail below with reference toFIG. 2E.

FIG. 2E shows a GUI 284 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations. Conversation member management interface 286 can bepresented in response to a user interaction with user interface element282. For example, the conversation member management interface 286 canbe provided for display by the client machine in response to a userclicking on user interface element 282. Member management interface 286can include a list of all conversation members of a conversation such asthat described above with reference to FIG. 2C. More particularly, thelist can be provided in response to user interaction with user interfaceelement 282 or another user interface element, which can be providedwithin member management interface 286. Members of the conversation canbe listed in the order in which they were added to the conversation, asshown in this example. In other words, members of the conversation canbe listed in chronological order. Alternatively, members of theconversation can be listed in alphabetical order or another suitableconfiguration. In some implementations, the order in which members arepresented within member management interface 286 is configurable by auser.

In accordance with various implementations, member management interface286 indicates, for each member in the list, a role of the member in theconversation. For example, a member can be identified as an author,liker, commentator, mentioner, etc.

In some implementations, member management interface 286 includes searchinterface element 288 that enables a user to search for a particularindividual or group. This may be useful where the member list isparticularly lengthy. If the individual or group is a member of theconversation, the system may provide at least a portion of the list thatincludes the individual or group for display by the client device. Thelist may be provided for display within member management interface 286or via a further user interface element. In some implementations, thesystem may transmit a notification message that indicates whether theindividual or group is a member of the conversation. The notificationmessage can be provided to a client device for display within or inconjunction with member management interface 286.

Member management interface 286 can include additional user interfaceelements that enable a user to modify the list of conversation members.In some implementations, member management interface 286 includes “AddMember” user interface element 290. A user can interact with userinterface element 290 to add a new member to the conversation. Forexample, after a user searches for an individual, Sandy Larson, thesystem can provide, for display by the client device, a notificationthat Sandy Larson is not a member of the conversation. The user can addSandy Larson by clicking on user interface element 290 and submittingthe name of the individual, Sandy Larson, being added to theconversation.

In some implementations, member management interface 286 includes“Remove Member” user interface element 292. A user can interact withuser interface element 292 to remove a member from the conversation. Thecapability to remove a member from the conversation may be provided toonly a subset of the members of the conversation. For example, userinterface element 292 may be provided to and/or enabled for the memberbeing removed from the conversation. In other words, a user who wishesto no longer be a part of the conversation can remove him or herselffrom the conversation by interacting with user interface element 292. Asanother example, user interface element 292 may be provided to and/orenabled for a user in a managerial or other supervisory role (e.g.,president, vice president, director). As shown in FIG. 2E, the user canclick on user interface element 292 and submit the name of the memberbeing removed from the conversation. In the event that the user does nothave authority to remove a member from the conversation, the system mayprovide a notification, for display by the client device, indicatingthat the user does not have authority to remove a member or theparticular member from the conversation.

In accordance with various implementations, the addition of a new memberto the conversation or removal of a member from the conversation viainteraction with user interface element(s) of the member managementinterface 286 results in the modification of the information thatidentifies the members of the conversation, as stored in database(s). Insome implementations, responsive to interaction with user interfaceelement(s) of the member management interface 286, the system modifiesthe information in the database(s) without notifying other users. Inother words, the information in the database(s) can be updated withoutgenerating or providing corresponding feed items within the feeds of theconversation members or other users receiving feed items pertaining tothe conversation. In this manner, membership of a conversation can bemodified via direct interaction with the member management interface 286without unnecessarily cluttering user feeds. In other implementations,the addition and/or removal of a member via interaction with userinterface element(s) of the member management interface 286 can triggerthe generation of corresponding feed items that can be rendered withinfeeds of users including the members of the conversation.

In this example, user interface elements 290 and 292 are buttons.However, a user interface element may be presented in another manner orformat to enable a user to interact with the system. For example, a userinterface element may include a hypertext link, tab, check box, or bar.

In some implementations, membership of a conversation may be modifiedvia direct user interaction with the list. For example, a user can clickon a member within the list to remove the member from the conversation.Information identifying the conversation members can be updated withinthe database(s) with or without notifying users of the change inmembership, as described above.

FIG. 2F shows a GUI 290 generated on a display device of a clientmachine in a social network environment, in accordance with one or moreimplementations. As described above, new members can be added to aconversation without submitting associated comments. Referring back tothe example shown in FIG. 2C, two members, Jake Clayton and Sarah Kline,were added as members of the conversation. Specifically, the two memberswere added via two separate mentions. Since the mentions do notsubstantively add to the conversation, the presentation of the mentionswithin user feeds merely serve to notify other users of the addition ofthe new members to the conversation. However, as additional members areadded to the conversation, the feeds become more lengthy and confusingto users that are members of the conversation or other individuals thatreceive feed items pertaining to the conversation in their feeds.

In some implementations, to simplify user feeds, user-submitted mentionsthat add new members without associated comments can be eliminated fromthe user feeds. As shown in FIG. 2F, mentions 270 and 272 shown in FIG.2C are eliminated from the feed 262. The elimination of mentions thatare submitted without associated comments can be performed for all feedsor according to a particular configuration. For example, a user cansubmit a configuration in association with their feed without impactingthe feeds of other users. As another example, a particular feedconfiguration may be established in association with a specific group orcommunity of users. In accordance with various implementations, in theevent that a user mentions a new member without submitting an associatedcomment, the mentioning of the new member is not shown in the feeds ofother users. Instead, the user mentioning the new member can benotified, via the GUI 290, that the mentioning of the new member willnot be included in the feeds of other users. In this manner, user feedscan receive feed items pertaining to a conversation that includesubstantive information without receiving unnecessary feed items thatsolely mention a new member being added to the conversation.

FIG. 3 shows an example of a method 300 for providing a conversationmembership interface, in accordance with some implementations. A usermay type a social media message and indicate an intended recipient ofthe social media message. The user may then submit a share request thatindicates a request to share the social media message with the intendedrecipient. For example, the user may click on a Post or Share userinterface element to share the social media message with the intendedrecipient. The user that submitted the social media message may also bereferred to as an author of the social media message.

The social media message and an indication of the intended recipient ofthe social media message may be obtained by a database system via asocial networking system as shown at 302 and 304, respectively. Theshare request indicating a request to share the social media messagewith the intended recipient may be processed at 306.

The system may provide a GUI for display at a client device at 308,where the GUI includes the social media message and an indication thatthe social media message has been shared with the intended recipient.More particularly, the GUI may be provided for display at a clientdevice of the user or another individual, who may be a member of theconversation. In addition, the GUI may indicate a time that the socialmedia message was shared.

After the message has been shared, additional members may be added tothe conversation. In some implementations, the addition of a new memberwithout an associated comment (e.g., via mentioning) is not communicatedwithin the feeds of other users. In other words, this mentioning of anadditional member may be effectively filtered (e.g., removed) from thefeeds of other users.

For example, an indication of an identity of an additional member beingadded to the conversation pertaining to the social media message may beobtained via the social networking system. This indication may besubmitted by a first member of the conversation. Where the indication(e.g., mention) is not submitted in conjunction with a comment on thesocial media message, the feed of a second member may be filtered suchthat the feed does not include an indication that the additional memberhas been added as one of the members of the conversation. In theseinstances, the first member may be notified that feeds of other membersof the conversation will not include an indication that the additionalmember has been added to the conversation.

In accordance with various implementations, the GUI may further includea user interface element that enables a user to access a list of membersof a conversation pertaining to the social media message. For example,the user interface element can include text (e.g., “Members”)corresponding to a hypertext link or button. The user interface elementmay be presented in close proximity to the message within the GUI. Theuser can select the user interface element to access the list of membersof the conversation. For example, the user may click on the userinterface element.

The system may process an indication of selection of the user interfaceelement at 310. Responsive to processing the indication of the selectionof the user interface element, the database system may retrieve, from adatabase of the system, information identifying the members of theconversation pertaining to the social media message at 312 and provide alist identifying the members of the conversation for display at theclient device at 314.

Each of the members of the conversation can correspond to a singleindividual or group of individuals. The members of the conversation caninclude, for example, an author of the social media message, theintended recipient of the social media message, individuals or groupswho have been mentioned by one of the members in association with thesocial media message, individuals who have mentioned one of the membersof the conversation, individuals who have commented on the social mediamessage or a previous comment on the social media message, individualswho have liked the social media message, and/or individuals or groupswho have been copied by one of the members in association with thesocial media message. The list is modifiable via user interaction withthe list or one or more associated user interface elements, as will bedescribed in further detail below with reference to FIG. 4.

FIG. 4 shows an example of a method for modifying the membership of aconversation, in accordance with some implementations. A user mayinteract with a list identifying the members of a conversationpertaining to a social media message, either directly or via anassociated user interface element. For example, the user may click onthe list to add or remove a member. In some implementations, the usermay select an “Add Member” user interface element to add a new member tothe conversation. Alternatively, the user may select a “Remove Member”user interface element to remove a member from the conversation.Responsive to the user selection, a corresponding request to modify thelist may be received by the system as shown at 402.

The system processes the request to modify the list at 404. Inaccordance with various implementations, the system identifies the userprofile of the user and determines from the user profile whether theuser has authority to modify the list. In some implementations, thesystem determines whether the user has the authority to modify the listin the manner requested. The user may have the authority to add a memberto the conversation, but may have limited authority to remove a memberfrom the conversation. For example, the user may have the authority toremove themselves from the conversation, but may have limited or noauthority to remove other members from the conversation. In someinstances, the user may have the authority to remove a member that theuser originally added to the conversation. This may be desirable, forexample, where the user has erroneously added a member to theconversation.

Responsive to processing the request to modify the list, the system mayupdate, within a database of the database system, the informationidentifying the members of the conversation according to the request tomodify the list at 406. For example, in response to a request to add anadditional member to the conversation, the system may update theinformation such that the information identifies the additional member.As another example, in response to a request to remove a member from theconversation, the system may update the information such that one of themembers is removed from the list. In addition, an updated list ofconversation members that reflects the requested modification may beprovided for display at the client device at 408.

Some but not all of the techniques described or referenced herein areimplemented using or in conjunction with a social networking system.Social networking systems have become a popular way to facilitatecommunication among people, any of whom can be recognized as users of asocial networking system. One example of a social networking system isChatter®, provided by salesforce.com, inc. of San Francisco, Calif.salesforce.com, inc. is a provider of social networking services, CRMservices and other database management services, any of which can beaccessed and used in conjunction with the techniques disclosed herein insome implementations. In some but not all implementations, these variousservices can be provided in a cloud computing environment, for example,in the context of a multi-tenant database system. Thus, the disclosedtechniques can be implemented without having to install softwarelocally, that is, on computing devices of users interacting withservices available through the cloud. While the disclosedimplementations are often described with reference to Chatter®, thoseskilled in the art should understand that the disclosed techniques areneither limited to Chatter® nor to any other services and systemsprovided by salesforce.com, inc. and can be implemented in the contextof various other database systems and/or social networking systems suchas Facebook®, LinkedIn®, Twitter®, Google+®, Yammer® and Jive® by way ofexample only.

Some social networking systems can be implemented in various settings,including organizations. For instance, a social networking system can beimplemented to connect users within an enterprise such as a company orbusiness partnership, or a group of users within such an organization.For instance, Chatter® can be used by employee users in a division of abusiness organization to share data, communicate, and collaborate witheach other for various social purposes often involving the business ofthe organization. In the example of a multi-tenant database system, eachorganization or group within the organization can be a respective tenantof the system, as described in greater detail below.

In some social networking systems, users can access one or more socialnetwork feeds, which include information updates presented as items orentries in the feed. Such a feed item can include a single informationupdate or a collection of individual information updates. A feed itemcan include various types of data including character-based data, audiodata, image data and/or video data. A social network feed can bedisplayed in a graphical user interface (GUI) on a display device suchas the display of a computing device as described below. The informationupdates can include various social network data from various sources andcan be stored in a database system. In some but not all implementations,the disclosed methods, apparatus, systems, and computer program productsmay be configured or designed for use in a multi-tenant databaseenvironment. In accordance with various implementations, each tenant mayimplement a corresponding file deletion policy. A file deletion policymay be implemented by a single tenant or multiple tenants.

In some implementations, a social networking system may allow a user tofollow data objects in the form of CRM records such as cases, accounts,or opportunities, in addition to following individual users and groupsof users. The “following” of a record stored in a database, as describedin greater detail below, allows a user to track the progress of thatrecord when the user is subscribed to the record. Updates to the record,also referred to herein as changes to the record, are one type ofinformation update that can occur and be noted on a social network feedsuch as a record feed or a news feed of a user subscribed to the record.Examples of record updates include field changes in the record, updatesto the status of a record, as well as the creation of the record itself.Some records are publicly accessible, such that any user can follow therecord, while other records are private, for which appropriate securityclearance/permissions are a prerequisite to a user following the record.

Information updates can include various types of updates, which may ormay not be linked with a particular record. For example, informationupdates can be social media messages submitted by a user or can beotherwise generated in response to user actions or in response toevents. Examples of social media messages include: posts, comments,indications of a user's personal preferences such as “likes” and“dislikes”, updates to a user's status, uploaded files, anduser-submitted hyperlinks to social network data or other network datasuch as various documents and/or web pages on the Internet. Posts caninclude alpha-numeric or other character-based user inputs such aswords, phrases, statements, questions, emotional expressions, and/orsymbols. Comments generally refer to responses to posts or to otherinformation updates, such as words, phrases, statements, answers,questions, and reactionary emotional expressions and/or symbols.Multimedia data can be included in, linked with, or attached to a postor comment. For example, a post can include textual statements incombination with a JPEG image or animated image. A like or dislike canbe submitted in response to a particular post or comment. Examples ofuploaded files include presentations, documents, multimedia files, andthe like.

Users can follow a record by subscribing to the record, as mentionedabove. Users can also follow other entities such as other types of dataobjects, other users, and groups of users. Feed tracked updatesregarding such entities are one type of information update that can bereceived and included in the user's news feed. Any number of users canfollow a particular entity and thus view information updates pertainingto that entity on the users' respective news feeds. In some socialnetworks, users may follow each other by establishing connections witheach other, sometimes referred to as “friending” one another. Byestablishing such a connection, one user may be able to see informationgenerated by, generated about, or otherwise associated with anotheruser. For instance, a first user may be able to see information postedby a second user to the second user's personal social network page. Oneimplementation of such a personal social network page is a user'sprofile page, for example, in the form of a web page representing theuser's profile. In one example, when the first user is following thesecond user, the first user's news feed can receive a post from thesecond user submitted to the second user's profile feed. A user'sprofile feed is also referred to herein as the user's “wall,” which isone example of a social network feed displayed on the user's profilepage.

In some implementations, a social network feed may be specific to agroup of users of a social networking system. For instance, a group ofusers may publish a feed. Members of the group may view and post to thisgroup feed in accordance with a permissions configuration for the feedand the group. Information updates in a group context can also includechanges to group status information.

In some implementations, when data such as posts or comments input fromone or more users are submitted to a social network feed for aparticular user, group, object, or other construct within a socialnetworking system, an email notification or other type of networkcommunication may be transmitted to all users following the user, group,or object in addition to the inclusion of the data as a feed item in oneor more feeds, such as a user's profile feed, a news feed, or a recordfeed. In some social networking systems, the occurrence of such anotification is limited to the first instance of a published input,which may form part of a larger conversation. For instance, anotification may be transmitted for an initial post, but not forcomments on the post. In some other implementations, a separatenotification is transmitted for each such information update.

The term “multi-tenant database system” generally refers to thosesystems in which various elements of hardware and/or software of adatabase system may be shared by one or more customers. For example, agiven application server may simultaneously process requests for a greatnumber of customers, and a given database table may store rows of datasuch as feed items for a potentially much greater number of customers.

An example of a “user profile” or “user's profile” is a database objector set of objects configured to store and maintain data about a givenuser of a social networking system and/or database system. The data caninclude general information, such as name, title, phone number, a photo,a biographical summary, and a status, e.g., text describing what theuser is currently doing. As mentioned below, the data can include socialmedia messages created by other users. Where there are multiple tenants,a user is typically associated with a particular tenant. For example, auser could be a salesperson of a company, which is a tenant of thedatabase system that provides a database service.

The term “record” generally refers to a data entity having fields withvalues and stored in database system. An example of a record is aninstance of a data object created by a user of the database service, forexample, in the form of a CRM record about a particular (actual orpotential) business relationship or project. The record can have a datastructure defined by the database service (a standard object) or definedby a user (custom object). For example, a record can be for a businesspartner or potential business partner (e.g., a client, vendor,distributor, etc.) of the user, and can include information describingan entire company, subsidiaries, or contacts at the company. As anotherexample, a record can be a project that the user is working on, such asan opportunity (e.g., a possible sale) with an existing partner, or aproject that the user is trying to get. In one implementation of amulti-tenant database system, each record for the tenants has a uniqueidentifier stored in a common table. A record has data fields that aredefined by the structure of the object (e.g., fields of certain datatypes and purposes). A record can also have custom fields defined by auser. A field can be another record or include links thereto, therebyproviding a parent-child relationship between the records.

The terms “social network feed” and “feed” are used interchangeablyherein and generally refer to a combination (e.g., a list) of feed itemsor entries with various types of information and data. Such feed itemscan be stored and maintained in one or more database tables, e.g., asrows in the table(s), that can be accessed to retrieve relevantinformation to be presented as part of a displayed feed. The term “feeditem” (or feed element) generally refers to an item of information,which can be presented in the feed such as a post submitted by a user.Feed items of information about a user can be presented in a user'sprofile feed of the database, while feed items of information about arecord can be presented in a record feed in the database, by way ofexample. A profile feed and a record feed are examples of differenttypes of social network feeds. A second user following a first user anda record can receive the feed items associated with the first user andthe record for display in the second user's news feed, which is anothertype of social network feed. In some implementations, the feed itemsfrom any number of followed users and records can be combined into asingle social network feed of a particular user.

As examples, a feed item can be a social media message, such as auser-generated post of text data, and a feed tracked update to a recordor profile, such as a change to a field of the record. Feed trackedupdates are described in greater detail below. A feed can be acombination of social media messages and feed tracked updates. Socialmedia messages include text created by a user, and may include otherdata as well. Examples of social media messages include posts, userstatus updates, and comments. Social media messages can be created for auser's profile or for a record. Posts can be created by various users,potentially any user, although some restrictions can be applied. As anexample, posts can be made to a wall section of a user's profile page(which can include a number of recent posts) or a section of a recordthat includes multiple posts. The posts can be organized inchronological order when displayed in a GUI, for instance, on the user'sprofile page, as part of the user's profile feed. In contrast to a post,a user status update changes a status of a user and can be made by thatuser or an administrator. A record can also have a status, the update ofwhich can be provided by an owner of the record or other users havingsuitable write access permissions to the record. The owner can be asingle user, multiple users, or a group.

In some implementations, a comment can be made on any feed item. In someimplementations, comments are organized as a list explicitly tied to aparticular feed tracked update, post, or status update. In someimplementations, comments may not be listed in the first layer (in ahierarchal sense) of feed items, but listed as a second layer branchingfrom a particular first layer feed item.

A “feed tracked update,” also referred to herein as a “feed update,” isone type of information update and generally refers to data representingan event. A feed tracked update can include text generated by thedatabase system in response to the event, to be provided as one or morefeed items for possible inclusion in one or more feeds. In oneimplementation, the data can initially be stored, and then the databasesystem can later use the data to create text for describing the event.Both the data and/or the text can be a feed tracked update, as usedherein. In various implementations, an event can be an update of arecord and/or can be triggered by a specific action by a user. Whichactions trigger an event can be configurable. Which events have feedtracked updates created and which feed updates are sent to which userscan also be configurable. Social media messages and other types of feedupdates can be stored as a field or child object of the record. Forexample, the feed can be stored as a child object of the record.

A “group” is generally a collection of users. In some implementations,the group may be defined as users with a same or similar attribute, orby membership. In some implementations, a “group feed”, also referred toherein as a “group news feed”, includes one or more feed items about anyuser in the group. In some implementations, the group feed also includesinformation updates and other feed items that are about the group as awhole, the group's purpose, the group's description, and group recordsand other objects stored in association with the group. Threads ofinformation updates including group record updates and social mediamessages, such as posts, comments, likes, etc., can define groupconversations and change over time.

An “entity feed” or “record feed” generally refers to a feed of feeditems about a particular record in the database. Such feed items caninclude feed tracked updates about changes to the record and posts madeby users about the record. An entity feed can be composed of any type offeed item. Such a feed can be displayed on a page such as a web pageassociated with the record, e.g., a home page of the record. As usedherein, a “profile feed” or “user's profile feed” generally refers to afeed of feed items about a particular user. In one example, the feeditems for a profile feed include posts and comments that other usersmake about or send to the particular user, and status updates made bythe particular user. Such a profile feed can be displayed on a pageassociated with the particular user. In another example, feed items in aprofile feed could include posts made by the particular user and feedtracked updates initiated based on actions of the particular user.

Some non-limiting examples of systems, apparatus, and methods aredescribed below for implementing database systems and enterprise levelsocial networking systems in conjunction with the disclosed techniques.Such implementations can provide more efficient use of a databasesystem. For instance, a user of a database system may not easily knowwhen important information in the database has changed, e.g., about aproject or client. Such implementations can provide feed tracked updatesabout such changes and other events, thereby keeping users informed.

FIG. 5A shows a block diagram of an example of an environment 10 inwhich an on-demand database service exists and can be used in accordancewith some implementations. Environment 10 may include user systems 12,network 14, database system 16, processor system 17, applicationplatform 18, network interface 20, tenant data storage 22, system datastorage 24, program code 26, and process space 28. In otherimplementations, environment 10 may not have all of these componentsand/or may have other components instead of, or in addition to, thoselisted above.

A user system 12 may be implemented as any computing device(s) or otherdata processing apparatus such as a machine or system used by a user toaccess a database system 16. For example, any of user systems 12 can bea handheld and/or portable computing device such as a mobile phone, asmartphone, a laptop computer, or a tablet. Other examples of a usersystem include computing devices such as a work station and/or a networkof computing devices. As illustrated in FIG. 5A (and in more detail inFIG. 5B) user systems 12 might interact via a network 14 with anon-demand database service, which is implemented in the example of FIG.5A as database system 16.

An on-demand database service, implemented using system 16 by way ofexample, is a service that is made available to users who do not need tonecessarily be concerned with building and/or maintaining the databasesystem. Instead, the database system may be available for their use whenthe users need the database system, i.e., on the demand of the users.Some on-demand database services may store information from one or moretenants into tables of a common database image to form a multi-tenantdatabase system (MTS). A database image may include one or more databaseobjects. A relational database management system (RDBMS) or theequivalent may execute storage and retrieval of information against thedatabase object(s). Application platform 18 may be a framework thatallows the applications of system 16 to run, such as the hardware and/orsoftware, e.g., the operating system. In some implementations,application platform 18 enables creation, managing and executing one ormore applications developed by the provider of the on-demand databaseservice, users accessing the on-demand database service via user systems12, or third party application developers accessing the on-demanddatabase service via user systems 12.

The users of user systems 12 may differ in their respective capacities,and the capacity of a particular user system 12 might be entirelydetermined by permissions (permission levels) for the current user. Forexample, when a salesperson is using a particular user system 12 tointeract with system 16, the user system has the capacities allotted tothat salesperson. However, while an administrator is using that usersystem to interact with system 16, that user system has the capacitiesallotted to that administrator. In systems with a hierarchical rolemodel, users at one permission level may have access to applications,data, and database information accessible by a lower permission leveluser, but may not have access to certain applications, databaseinformation, and data accessible by a user at a higher permission level.Thus, different users will have different capabilities with regard toaccessing and modifying application and database information, dependingon a user's security or permission level, also called authorization.

Network 14 is any network or combination of networks of devices thatcommunicate with one another. For example, network 14 can be any one orany combination of a LAN (local area network), WAN (wide area network),telephone network, wireless network, point-to-point network, starnetwork, token ring network, hub network, or other appropriateconfiguration. Network 14 can include a TCP/IP (Transfer ControlProtocol and Internet Protocol) network, such as the global internetworkof networks often referred to as the Internet. The Internet will be usedin many of the examples herein. However, it should be understood thatthe networks that the present implementations might use are not solimited.

User systems 12 might communicate with system 16 using TCP/IP and, at ahigher network level, use other common Internet protocols tocommunicate, such as HTTP, FTP, AFS, WAP, etc. In an example where HTTPis used, user system 12 might include an HTTP client commonly referredto as a “browser” for sending and receiving HTTP signals to and from anHTTP server at system 16. Such an HTTP server might be implemented asthe sole network interface 20 between system 16 and network 14, butother techniques might be used as well or instead. In someimplementations, the network interface 20 between system 16 and network14 includes load sharing functionality, such as round-robin HTTP requestdistributors to balance loads and distribute incoming HTTP requestsevenly over a plurality of servers. At least for users accessing system16, each of the plurality of servers has access to the MTS' data;however, other alternative configurations may be used instead.

In one implementation, system 16, shown in FIG. 5A, implements aweb-based CRM system. For example, in one implementation, system 16includes application servers configured to implement and execute CRMsoftware applications as well as provide related data, code, forms, webpages and other information to and from user systems 12 and to store to,and retrieve from, a database system related data, objects, and Webpagecontent. With a multi-tenant system, data for multiple tenants may bestored in the same physical database object in tenant data storage 22,however, tenant data typically is arranged in the storage medium(s) oftenant data storage 22 so that data of one tenant is kept logicallyseparate from that of other tenants so that one tenant does not haveaccess to another tenant's data, unless such data is expressly shared.In certain implementations, system 16 implements applications otherthan, or in addition to, a CRM application. For example, system 16 mayprovide tenant access to multiple hosted (standard and custom)applications, including a CRM application. User (or third partydeveloper) applications, which may or may not include CRM, may besupported by the application platform 18, which manages creation,storage of the applications into one or more database objects andexecuting of the applications in a virtual machine in the process spaceof the system 16.

One arrangement for elements of system 16 is shown in FIGS. 5A and 5B,including a network interface 20, application platform 18, tenant datastorage 22 for tenant data 23, system data storage 24 for system data 25accessible to system 16 and possibly multiple tenants, program code 26for implementing various functions of system 16, and a process space 28for executing MTS system processes and tenant-specific processes, suchas running applications as part of an application hosting service.Additional processes that may execute on system 16 include databaseindexing processes.

Several elements in the system shown in FIG. 5A include conventional,well-known elements that are explained only briefly here. For example,each user system 12 could include a desktop personal computer,workstation, laptop, PDA, cell phone, or any wireless access protocol(WAP) enabled device or any other computing device capable ofinterfacing directly or indirectly to the Internet or other networkconnection. The term “computing device” is also referred to hereinsimply as a “computer”. User system 12 typically runs an HTTP client,e.g., a browsing program, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser,Netscape's Navigator browser, Opera's browser, or a WAP-enabled browserin the case of a cell phone, PDA or other wireless device, or the like,allowing a user (e.g., subscriber of the multi-tenant database system)of user system 12 to access, process and view information, pages andapplications available to it from system 16 over network 14. Each usersystem 12 also typically includes one or more user input devices, suchas a keyboard, a mouse, trackball, touch pad, touch screen, pen or thelike, for interacting with a GUI provided by the browser on a display(e.g., a monitor screen, LCD display, OLED display, etc.) of thecomputing device in conjunction with pages, forms, applications andother information provided by system 16 or other systems or servers.Thus, “display device” as used herein can refer to a display of acomputer system such as a monitor or touch-screen display, and can referto any computing device having display capabilities such as a desktopcomputer, laptop, tablet, smartphone, a television set-top box, orwearable device such Google Glass® or other human body-mounted displayapparatus. For example, the display device can be used to access dataand applications hosted by system 16, and to perform searches on storeddata, and otherwise allow a user to interact with various GUI pages thatmay be presented to a user. As discussed above, implementations aresuitable for use with the Internet, although other networks can be usedinstead of or in addition to the Internet, such as an intranet, anextranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a non-TCP/IP based network,any LAN or WAN or the like.

According to one implementation, each user system 12 and all of itscomponents are operator configurable using applications, such as abrowser, including computer code run using a central processing unitsuch as an Intel Pentium® processor or the like. Similarly, system 16(and additional instances of an MTS, where more than one is present) andall of its components might be operator configurable usingapplication(s) including computer code to run using processor system 17,which may be implemented to include a central processing unit, which mayinclude an Intel Pentium® processor or the like, and/or multipleprocessor units. Non-transitory computer-readable media can haveinstructions stored thereon/in, that can be executed by or used toprogram a computing device to perform any of the methods of theimplementations described herein. Computer program code 26 implementinginstructions for operating and configuring system 16 to intercommunicateand to process web pages, applications and other data and media contentas described herein is preferably downloadable and stored on a harddisk, but the entire program code, or portions thereof, may also bestored in any other volatile or non-volatile memory medium or device asis well known, such as a ROM or RAM, or provided on any media capable ofstoring program code, such as any type of rotating media includingfloppy disks, optical discs, digital versatile disk (DVD), compact disk(CD), microdrive, and magneto-optical disks, and magnetic or opticalcards, nanosystems (including molecular memory ICs), or any other typeof computer-readable medium or device suitable for storing instructionsand/or data. Additionally, the entire program code, or portions thereof,may be transmitted and downloaded from a software source over atransmission medium, e.g., over the Internet, or from another server, asis well known, or transmitted over any other conventional networkconnection as is well known (e.g., extranet, VPN, LAN, etc.) using anycommunication medium and protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, Ethernet,etc.) as are well known. It will also be appreciated that computer codefor the disclosed implementations can be realized in any programminglanguage that can be executed on a client system and/or server or serversystem such as, for example, C, C++, HTML, any other markup language,Java™, JavaScript, ActiveX, any other scripting language, such asVBScript, and many other programming languages as are well known may beused. (Java™ is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.).

According to some implementations, each system 16 is configured toprovide web pages, forms, applications, data and media content to user(client) systems 12 to support the access by user systems 12 as tenantsof system 16. As such, system 16 provides security mechanisms to keepeach tenant's data separate unless the data is shared. If more than oneMTS is used, they may be located in close proximity to one another(e.g., in a server farm located in a single building or campus), or theymay be distributed at locations remote from one another (e.g., one ormore servers located in city A and one or more servers located in cityB). As used herein, each MTS could include one or more logically and/orphysically connected servers distributed locally or across one or moregeographic locations. Additionally, the term “server” is meant to referto one type of computing device such as a system including processinghardware and process space(s), an associated storage medium such as amemory device or database, and, in some instances, a databaseapplication (e.g., OODBMS or RDBMS) as is well known in the art. Itshould also be understood that “server system” and “server” are oftenused interchangeably herein. Similarly, the database objects describedherein can be implemented as single databases, a distributed database, acollection of distributed databases, a database with redundant online oroffline backups or other redundancies, etc., and might include adistributed database or storage network and associated processingintelligence.

FIG. 5B shows a block diagram of an example of some implementations ofelements of FIG. 5A and various possible interconnections between theseelements. That is, FIG. 5B also illustrates environment 10. However, inFIG. 5B elements of system 16 and various interconnections in someimplementations are further illustrated. FIG. 5B shows that user system12 may include processor system 12A, memory system 12B, input system12C, and output system 12D. FIG. 5B shows network 14 and system 16. FIG.5B also shows that system 16 may include tenant data storage 22, tenantdata 23, system data storage 24, system data 25, User Interface (UI) 30,Application Program Interface (API) 32, PL/SOQL 34, save routines 36,application setup mechanism 38, application servers 50 ₁-50 _(N), systemprocess space 52, tenant process spaces 54, tenant management processspace 60, tenant storage space 62, user storage 64, and applicationmetadata 66. In other implementations, environment 10 may not have thesame elements as those listed above and/or may have other elementsinstead of, or in addition to, those listed above.

User system 12, network 14, system 16, tenant data storage 22, andsystem data storage 24 were discussed above in FIG. 5A. Regarding usersystem 12, processor system 12A may be any combination of one or moreprocessors. Memory system 12B may be any combination of one or morememory devices, short term, and/or long term memory. Input system 12Cmay be any combination of input devices, such as one or more keyboards,mice, trackballs, scanners, cameras, and/or interfaces to networks.Output system 12D may be any combination of output devices, such as oneor more monitors, printers, and/or interfaces to networks. As shown byFIG. 5B, system 16 may include a network interface 20 (of FIG. 5A)implemented as a set of application servers 50, an application platform18, tenant data storage 22, and system data storage 24. Also shown issystem process space 52, including individual tenant process spaces 54and a tenant management process space 60. Each application server 50 maybe configured to communicate with tenant data storage 22 and the tenantdata 23 therein, and system data storage 24 and the system data 25therein to serve requests of user systems 12. The tenant data 23 mightbe divided into individual tenant storage spaces 62, which can be eithera physical arrangement and/or a logical arrangement of data. Within eachtenant storage space 62, user storage 64 and application metadata 66might be similarly allocated for each user. For example, a copy of auser's most recently used (MRU) items might be stored to user storage64. Similarly, a copy of MRU items for an entire organization that is atenant might be stored to tenant storage space 62. A UI 30 provides auser interface and an API 32 provides an application programmerinterface to system 16 resident processes to users and/or developers atuser systems 12. The tenant data and the system data may be stored invarious databases, such as one or more Oracle® databases.

Application platform 18 includes an application setup mechanism 38 thatsupports application developers' creation and management ofapplications, which may be saved as metadata into tenant data storage 22by save routines 36 for execution by subscribers as one or more tenantprocess spaces 54 managed by tenant management process 60 for example.Invocations to such applications may be coded using PL/SOQL 34 thatprovides a programming language style interface extension to API 32. Adetailed description of some PL/SOQL language implementations isdiscussed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,730,478, titled METHODAND SYSTEM FOR ALLOWING ACCESS TO DEVELOPED APPLICATIONS VIA AMULTI-TENANT ON-DEMAND DATABASE SERVICE, by Craig Weissman, issued onJun. 1, 2010, and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety andfor all purposes. Invocations to applications may be detected by one ormore system processes, which manage retrieving application metadata 66for the subscriber making the invocation and executing the metadata asan application in a virtual machine.

Each application server 50 may be communicably coupled to databasesystems, e.g., having access to system data 25 and tenant data 23, via adifferent network connection. For example, one application server 50 ₁might be coupled via the network 14 (e.g., the Internet), anotherapplication server 50 _(N-1) might be coupled via a direct network link,and another application server 50 _(N) might be coupled by yet adifferent network connection. Transfer Control Protocol and InternetProtocol (TCP/IP) are typical protocols for communicating betweenapplication servers 50 and the database system. However, it will beapparent to one skilled in the art that other transport protocols may beused to optimize the system depending on the network interconnect used.

In certain implementations, each application server 50 is configured tohandle requests for any user associated with any organization that is atenant. Because it is desirable to be able to add and remove applicationservers from the server pool at any time for any reason, there ispreferably no server affinity for a user and/or organization to aspecific application server 50. In one implementation, therefore, aninterface system implementing a load balancing function (e.g., an F5Big-IP load balancer) is communicably coupled between the applicationservers 50 and the user systems 12 to distribute requests to theapplication servers 50. In one implementation, the load balancer uses aleast connections algorithm to route user requests to the applicationservers 50. Other examples of load balancing algorithms, such as roundrobin and observed response time, also can be used. For example, incertain implementations, three consecutive requests from the same usercould hit three different application servers 50, and three requestsfrom different users could hit the same application server 50. In thismanner, by way of example, system 16 is multi-tenant, wherein system 16handles storage of, and access to, different objects, data andapplications across disparate users and organizations.

As an example of storage, one tenant might be a company that employs asales force where each salesperson uses system 16 to manage their salesprocess. Thus, a user might maintain contact data, leads data, customerfollow-up data, performance data, goals and progress data, etc., allapplicable to that user's personal sales process (e.g., in tenant datastorage 22). In an example of a MTS arrangement, since all of the dataand the applications to access, view, modify, report, transmit,calculate, etc., can be maintained and accessed by a user system havingnothing more than network access, the user can manage his or her salesefforts and cycles from any of many different user systems. For example,if a salesperson is visiting a customer and the customer has Internetaccess in their lobby, the salesperson can obtain critical updates as tothat customer while waiting for the customer to arrive in the lobby.

While each user's data might be separate from other users' dataregardless of the employers of each user, some data might beorganization-wide data shared or accessible by a plurality of users orall of the users for a given organization that is a tenant. Thus, theremight be some data structures managed by system 16 that are allocated atthe tenant level while other data structures might be managed at theuser level. Because an MTS might support multiple tenants includingpossible competitors, the MTS should have security protocols that keepdata, applications, and application use separate. Also, because manytenants may opt for access to an MTS rather than maintain their ownsystem, redundancy, up-time, and backup are additional functions thatmay be implemented in the MTS. In addition to user-specific data andtenant-specific data, system 16 might also maintain system level datausable by multiple tenants or other data. Such system level data mightinclude industry reports, news, postings, and the like that are sharableamong tenants.

In certain implementations, user systems 12 (which may be clientsystems) communicate with application servers 50 to request and updatesystem-level and tenant-level data from system 16 that may involvesending one or more queries to tenant data storage 22 and/or system datastorage 24. System 16 (e.g., an application server 50 in system 16)automatically generates one or more SQL statements (e.g., one or moreSQL queries) that are designed to access the desired information. Systemdata storage 24 may generate query plans to access the requested datafrom the database.

Each database can generally be viewed as a collection of objects, suchas a set of logical tables, containing data fitted into predefinedcategories. A “table” is one representation of a data object, and may beused herein to simplify the conceptual description of objects and customobjects according to some implementations. It should be understood that“table” and “object” may be used interchangeably herein. Each tablegenerally contains one or more data categories logically arranged ascolumns or fields in a viewable schema. Each row or record of a tablecontains an instance of data for each category defined by the fields.For example, a CRM database may include a table that describes acustomer with fields for basic contact information such as name,address, phone number, fax number, etc. Another table might describe apurchase order, including fields for information such as customer,product, sale price, date, etc. In some multi-tenant database systems,standard entity tables might be provided for use by all tenants. For CRMdatabase applications, such standard entities might include tables forcase, account, contact, lead, and opportunity data objects, eachcontaining pre-defined fields. It should be understood that the word“entity” may also be used interchangeably herein with “object” and“table”.

In some multi-tenant database systems, tenants may be allowed to createand store custom objects, or they may be allowed to customize standardentities or objects, for example by creating custom fields for standardobjects, including custom index fields. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No.7,779,039, titled CUSTOM ENTITIES AND FIELDS IN A MULTI-TENANT DATABASESYSTEM, by Weissman et al., issued on Aug. 17, 2010, and herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes, teachessystems and methods for creating custom objects as well as customizingstandard objects in a multi-tenant database system. In certainimplementations, for example, all custom entity data rows are stored ina single multi-tenant physical table, which may contain multiple logicaltables per organization. It is transparent to customers that theirmultiple “tables” are in fact stored in one large table or that theirdata may be stored in the same table as the data of other customers.

FIG. 6A shows a system diagram of an example of architectural componentsof an on-demand database service environment 900, in accordance withsome implementations. A client machine located in the cloud 904,generally referring to one or more networks in combination, as describedherein, may communicate with the on-demand database service environmentvia one or more edge routers 908 and 912. A client machine can be any ofthe examples of user systems 12 described above. The edge routers maycommunicate with one or more core switches 920 and 924 via firewall 916.The core switches may communicate with a load balancer 928, which maydistribute server load over different pods, such as the pods 940 and944. The pods 940 and 944, which may each include one or more serversand/or other computing resources, may perform data processing and otheroperations used to provide on-demand services. Communication with thepods may be conducted via pod switches 932 and 936. Components of theon-demand database service environment may communicate with a databasestorage 956 via a database firewall 948 and a database switch 952.

As shown in FIGS. 6A and 6B, accessing an on-demand database serviceenvironment may involve communications transmitted among a variety ofdifferent hardware and/or software components. Further, the on-demanddatabase service environment 900 is a simplified representation of anactual on-demand database service environment. For example, while onlyone or two devices of each type are shown in FIGS. 6A and 6B, someimplementations of an on-demand database service environment may includeanywhere from one to many devices of each type. Also, the on-demanddatabase service environment need not include each device shown in FIGS.6A and 6B, or may include additional devices not shown in FIGS. 6A and6B.

Moreover, one or more of the devices in the on-demand database serviceenvironment 900 may be implemented on the same physical device or ondifferent hardware. Some devices may be implemented using hardware or acombination of hardware and software. Thus, terms such as “dataprocessing apparatus,” “machine,” “server” and “device” as used hereinare not limited to a single hardware device, but rather include anyhardware and software configured to provide the described functionality.

The cloud 904 is intended to refer to a data network or combination ofdata networks, often including the Internet. Client machines located inthe cloud 904 may communicate with the on-demand database serviceenvironment to access services provided by the on-demand databaseservice environment. For example, client machines may access theon-demand database service environment to retrieve, store, edit, and/orprocess information.

In some implementations, the edge routers 908 and 912 route packetsbetween the cloud 904 and other components of the on-demand databaseservice environment 900. The edge routers 908 and 912 may employ theBorder Gateway Protocol (BGP). The BGP is the core routing protocol ofthe Internet. The edge routers 908 and 912 may maintain a table of IPnetworks or ‘prefixes’, which designate network reachability amongautonomous systems on the Internet.

In one or more implementations, the firewall 916 may protect the innercomponents of the on-demand database service environment 900 fromInternet traffic. The firewall 916 may block, permit, or deny access tothe inner components of the on-demand database service environment 900based upon a set of rules and other criteria. The firewall 916 may actas one or more of a packet filter, an application gateway, a statefulfilter, a proxy server, or any other type of firewall.

In some implementations, the core switches 920 and 924 are high-capacityswitches that transfer packets within the on-demand database serviceenvironment 900. The core switches 920 and 924 may be configured asnetwork bridges that quickly route data between different componentswithin the on-demand database service environment. In someimplementations, the use of two or more core switches 920 and 924 mayprovide redundancy and/or reduced latency.

In some implementations, the pods 940 and 944 may perform the core dataprocessing and service functions provided by the on-demand databaseservice environment. Each pod may include various types of hardwareand/or software computing resources. An example of the pod architectureis discussed in greater detail with reference to FIG. 6B.

In some implementations, communication between the pods 940 and 944 maybe conducted via the pod switches 932 and 936. The pod switches 932 and936 may facilitate communication between the pods 940 and 944 and clientmachines located in the cloud 904, for example via core switches 920 and924. Also, the pod switches 932 and 936 may facilitate communicationbetween the pods 940 and 944 and the database storage 956.

In some implementations, the load balancer 928 may distribute workloadbetween the pods 940 and 944. Balancing the on-demand service requestsbetween the pods may assist in improving the use of resources,increasing throughput, reducing response times, and/or reducingoverhead. The load balancer 928 may include multilayer switches toanalyze and forward traffic.

In some implementations, access to the database storage 956 may beguarded by a database firewall 948. The database firewall 948 may act asa computer application firewall operating at the database applicationlayer of a protocol stack. The database firewall 948 may protect thedatabase storage 956 from application attacks such as structure querylanguage (SQL) injection, database rootkits, and unauthorizedinformation disclosure.

In some implementations, the database firewall 948 may include a hostusing one or more forms of reverse proxy services to proxy trafficbefore passing it to a gateway router. The database firewall 948 mayinspect the contents of database traffic and block certain content ordatabase requests. The database firewall 948 may work on the SQLapplication level atop the TCP/IP stack, managing applications'connection to the database or SQL management interfaces as well asintercepting and enforcing packets traveling to or from a databasenetwork or application interface.

In some implementations, communication with the database storage 956 maybe conducted via the database switch 952. The multi-tenant databasestorage 956 may include more than one hardware and/or softwarecomponents for handling database queries. Accordingly, the databaseswitch 952 may direct database queries transmitted by other componentsof the on-demand database service environment (e.g., the pods 940 and944) to the correct components within the database storage 956.

In some implementations, the database storage 956 is an on-demanddatabase system shared by many different organizations. The on-demanddatabase service may employ a multi-tenant approach, a virtualizedapproach, or any other type of database approach. On-demand databaseservices are discussed in greater detail with reference to FIGS. 6A and6B.

FIG. 6B shows a system diagram further illustrating an example ofarchitectural components of an on-demand database service environment,in accordance with some implementations. The pod 944 may be used torender services to a user of the on-demand database service environment900. In some implementations, each pod may include a variety of serversand/or other systems. The pod 944 includes one or more content batchservers 964, content search servers 968, query servers 982, file servers986, access control system (ACS) servers 980, batch servers 984, and appservers 988. Also, the pod 944 includes database instances 990, quickfile systems (QFS) 992, and indexers 994. In one or moreimplementations, some or all communication between the servers in thepod 944 may be transmitted via the switch 936.

The content batch servers 964 may handle requests internal to the pod.These requests may be long-running and/or not tied to a particularcustomer. For example, the content batch servers 964 may handle requestsrelated to log mining, cleanup work, and maintenance tasks.

The content search servers 968 may provide query and indexer functions.For example, the functions provided by the content search servers 968may allow users to search through content stored in the on-demanddatabase service environment.

The file servers 986 may manage requests for information stored in thefile storage 998. The file storage 998 may store information such asdocuments, images, and basic large objects (BLOBs). By managing requestsfor information using the file servers 986, the image footprint on thedatabase may be reduced.

The query servers 982 may be used to retrieve information from one ormore file systems. For example, the query system 982 may receiverequests for information from the app servers 988 and then transmitinformation queries to the NFS 996 located outside the pod.

The pod 944 may share a database instance 990 configured as amulti-tenant environment in which different organizations share accessto the same database. Additionally, services rendered by the pod 944 maycall upon various hardware and/or software resources. In someimplementations, the ACS servers 980 may control access to data,hardware resources, or software resources.

In some implementations, the batch servers 984 may process batch jobs,which are used to run tasks at specified times. Thus, the batch servers984 may transmit instructions to other servers, such as the app servers988, to trigger the batch jobs.

In some implementations, the QFS 992 may be an open source file systemavailable from Sun Microsystems® of Santa Clara, Calif. The QFS mayserve as a rapid-access file system for storing and accessinginformation available within the pod 944. The QFS 992 may support somevolume management capabilities, allowing many disks to be groupedtogether into a file system. File system metadata can be kept on aseparate set of disks, which may be useful for streaming applicationswhere long disk seeks cannot be tolerated. Thus, the QFS system maycommunicate with one or more content search servers 968 and/or indexers994 to identify, retrieve, move, and/or update data stored in thenetwork file systems 996 and/or other storage systems.

In some implementations, one or more query servers 982 may communicatewith the NFS 996 to retrieve and/or update information stored outside ofthe pod 944. The NFS 996 may allow servers located in the pod 944 toaccess information to access files over a network in a manner similar tohow local storage is accessed.

In some implementations, queries from the query servers 922 may betransmitted to the NFS 996 via the load balancer 928, which maydistribute resource requests over various resources available in theon-demand database service environment. The NFS 996 may also communicatewith the QFS 992 to update the information stored on the NFS 996 and/orto provide information to the QFS 992 for use by servers located withinthe pod 944.

In some implementations, the pod may include one or more databaseinstances 990. The database instance 990 may transmit information to theQFS 992. When information is transmitted to the QFS, it may be availablefor use by servers within the pod 944 without using an additionaldatabase call.

In some implementations, database information may be transmitted to theindexer 994. Indexer 994 may provide an index of information availablein the database 990 and/or QFS 992. The index information may beprovided to file servers 986 and/or the QFS 992.

In some implementations, one or more application servers or otherservers described above with reference to FIGS. 5A and 5B include ahardware and/or software framework configurable to execute proceduresusing programs, routines, scripts, etc. Thus, in some implementations,one or more of application servers 50 ₁-50 _(N) of FIG. 5B can beconfigured to initiate performance of one or more of the operationsdescribed above by instructing another computing device to perform anoperation. In some implementations, one or more application servers 50₁-50 _(N) carry out, either partially or entirely, one or more of thedisclosed operations. In some implementations, app servers 988 of FIG.6B support the construction of applications provided by the on-demanddatabase service environment 900 via the pod 944. Thus, an app server988 may include a hardware and/or software framework configurable toexecute procedures to partially or entirely carry out or instructanother computing device to carry out one or more operations disclosedherein. In alternative implementations, two or more app servers 988 maycooperate to perform or cause performance of such operations. Any of thedatabases and other storage facilities described above with reference toFIGS. 5A, 5B, 6A and 6B can be configured to store lists, articles,documents, records, files, and other objects for implementing theoperations described above. For instance, lists of availablecommunication channels associated with share actions for sharing a typeof data item can be maintained in tenant data storage 22 and/or systemdata storage 24 of FIGS. 5A and 5B. By the same token, lists of defaultor designated channels for particular share actions can be maintained instorage 22 and/or storage 24. In some other implementations, rather thanstoring one or more lists, articles, documents, records, and/or files,the databases and other storage facilities described above can storepointers to the lists, articles, documents, records, and/or files, whichmay instead be stored in other repositories external to the systems andenvironments described above with reference to FIGS. 5A, 5B, 6A and 6B.

While some of the disclosed implementations may be described withreference to a system having an application server providing a front endfor an on-demand database service capable of supporting multipletenants, the disclosed implementations are not limited to multi-tenantdatabases nor deployment on application servers. Some implementationsmay be practiced using various database architectures such as ORACLE®,DB2® by IBM and the like without departing from the scope of theimplementations claimed.

It should be understood that some of the disclosed implementations canbe embodied in the form of control logic using hardware and/or computersoftware in a modular or integrated manner. Other ways and/or methodsare possible using hardware and a combination of hardware and software.

Any of the disclosed implementations may be embodied in various types ofhardware, software, firmware, and combinations thereof. For example,some techniques disclosed herein may be implemented, at least in part,by computer-readable media that include program instructions, stateinformation, etc., for performing various services and operationsdescribed herein. Examples of program instructions include both machinecode, such as produced by a compiler, and files containing higher-levelcode that may be executed by a computing device such as a server orother data processing apparatus using an interpreter. Examples ofcomputer-readable media include, but are not limited to: magnetic mediasuch as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape; optical media suchas flash memory, compact disk (CD) or digital versatile disk (DVD);magneto-optical media; and hardware devices specially configured tostore program instructions, such as read-only memory (ROM) devices andrandom access memory (RAM) devices. A computer-readable medium may beany combination of such storage devices.

Any of the operations and techniques described in this application maybe implemented as software code to be executed by a processor using anysuitable computer language such as, for example, Java, C++ or Perlusing, for example, object-oriented techniques. The software code may bestored as a series of instructions or commands on a computer-readablemedium. Computer-readable media encoded with the software/program codemay be packaged with a compatible device or provided separately fromother devices (e.g., via Internet download). Any such computer-readablemedium may reside on or within a single computing device or an entirecomputer system, and may be among other computer-readable media within asystem or network. A computer system or computing device may include amonitor, printer, or other suitable display for providing any of theresults mentioned herein to a user.

While various implementations have been described herein, it should beunderstood that they have been presented by way of example only, and notlimitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of the present applicationshould not be limited by any of the implementations described herein,but should be defined only in accordance with the following andlater-submitted claims and their equivalents.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system comprising: a database systemimplemented using a server system, the database system configurable tocause: obtaining, via a social networking system, a social mediamessage; obtaining, via the social networking system, an indication ofan intended recipient of the social media message; processing a sharerequest received via the social networking system, the share requestindicating a request to share the social media message with the intendedrecipient; providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for display at aclient device, the GUI including the social media message, an indicationthat the social media message has been shared with the intendedrecipient, and a user interface element; and responsive to processing anindication of a selection of the user interface element, retrieving,from a database of the database system, information identifying membersof a conversation pertaining to the social media message; and providinga list for display at the client device, the list identifying themembers of the conversation pertaining to the social media message, themembers including an author of the social media message, the intendedrecipient of the social media message, individuals who have beenmentioned by one of the members in association with the social mediamessage, individuals who have mentioned one of the members of theconversation, individuals who have commented on the social media messageor a previous comment on the social media message, and individuals whohave liked the social media message, the list being modifiable viainteraction with the list or one or more associated user interfaceelements.
 2. The system of claim 1, the database system being furtherconfigurable to cause: processing a user request to modify the listidentifying the members of the conversation pertaining to the socialmedia message; and responsive to processing the user request to modifythe list identifying the members of the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message, updating, within the database of the databasesystem, the information identifying the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message according to a result ofprocessing the request.
 3. The system of claim 2, the database systembeing further configurable to cause: determining whether the user hasauthority to modify the list identifying the members of the conversationaccording to the user request; wherein updating the information isperformed according to a result of determining whether the user hasauthority to modify the list identifying the members of the conversationaccording to the user request.
 4. The system of claim 1, the databasesystem being further configurable to cause: processing a request to addan additional member to the list identifying the members of theconversation pertaining to the social media message; and responsive toprocessing the request to add the additional member to the list,updating, within the database of the database system, the informationidentifying the members of the conversation pertaining to the socialmedia message such that the information identifies the additionalmember; and providing an updated list for display at the client device,the updated list identifying the members of the conversation pertainingto the social media message, the members including the additionalmember.
 5. The system of claim 1, the database system being furtherconfigurable to cause: processing a request to remove a particular oneof the members from the conversation pertaining to the social mediamessage; and responsive to processing the request to remove theparticular one of the members from the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message, updating, within the database of the databasesystem, the information identifying the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message such that the information doesnot identify the particular one of the members; and providing an updatedlist for display at the client device, the updated list identifying themembers of the conversation pertaining to the social media message, theupdated list not identifying the particular one of the members.
 6. Thesystem of claim 1, the database system being further configurable tocause: obtaining, via the social networking system, an indication of anidentity of an additional member being added to the conversationpertaining to the social media message, the indication being submittedby a first one of the members of the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message, wherein the indication of the identity of theadditional member being added to the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message is not submitted in conjunction with a comment onthe social media message; and filtering an information feed of a secondone of the members of the conversation pertaining to the social mediamessage such that the information feed does not include an indicationthat the additional member has been added as one of the members of theconversation pertaining to the social media message.
 7. The system ofclaim 6, the database system being further configurable to cause:notifying the first one of the members of the conversation pertaining tothe social media message that feeds of other members of the conversationdo not include an indication that the additional member has been addedto the conversation by the first one of the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message.
 8. A computer program productcomprising computer-readable program code capable of being executed byone or more processors when retrieved from a non-transitorycomputer-readable medium, the program code comprising computer-readableinstructions configurable to cause: obtaining, via a social networkingsystem, a social media message; obtaining, via the social networkingsystem, an indication of an intended recipient of the social mediamessage; processing a share request received via the social networkingsystem, the share request indicating a request to share the social mediamessage with the intended recipient; providing a graphical userinterface (GUI) for display at a client device, the GUI including thesocial media message, an indication that the social media message hasbeen shared with the intended recipient, and a user interface element;and responsive to processing an indication of a selection of the userinterface element, retrieving, from a database of a database system,information identifying members of a conversation pertaining to thesocial media message; and providing a list for display at the clientdevice, the list identifying the members of the conversation pertainingto the social media message, the members including an author of thesocial media message, the intended recipient of the social mediamessage, individuals who have been mentioned by one of the members inassociation with the social media message, individuals who havementioned one of the members of the conversation, individuals who havecommented on the social media message or a previous comment on thesocial media message, and individuals who have liked the social mediamessage, the list being modifiable via interaction with the list or oneor more associated user interface elements.
 9. The computer programproduct of claim 8, the program code comprising computer-readableinstructions further configured to cause: processing a user request tomodify the list identifying the members of the conversation pertainingto the social media message; and responsive to processing the userrequest to modify the list identifying the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message, updating, within the database ofthe database system, the information identifying the members of theconversation pertaining to the social media message according to aresult of processing the request.
 10. The computer program product ofclaim 9, the program code comprising computer-readable instructionsfurther configured to cause: determining whether the user has authorityto modify the list identifying the members of the conversation accordingto the user request; wherein updating the information is performedaccording to a result of determining whether the user has authority tomodify the list identifying the members of the conversation according tothe user request.
 11. The computer program product of claim 8, theprogram code comprising computer-readable instructions furtherconfigured to cause: processing a request to add an additional member tothe list identifying the members of the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message; and responsive to processing the request to addthe additional member to the list, updating, within the database of thedatabase system, the information identifying the members of theconversation pertaining to the social media message such that theinformation identifies the additional member; and providing an updatedlist for display at the client device, the updated list identifying themembers of the conversation pertaining to the social media message, themembers including the additional member.
 12. The computer programproduct of claim 8, the program code comprising computer-readableinstructions further configured to cause: processing a request to removea particular one of the members from the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message; and responsive to processing the request to removethe particular one of the members from the conversation pertaining tothe social media message, updating, within the database of the databasesystem, the information identifying the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message such that the information doesnot identify the particular one of the members; and providing an updatedlist for display at the client device, the updated list identifying themembers of the conversation pertaining to the social media message, theupdated list not identifying the particular one of the members.
 13. Thecomputer program product of claim 8, the program code comprisingcomputer-readable instructions further configured to cause: obtaining,via the social networking system, an indication of an identity of anadditional member being added to the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message, the indication being submitted by a first one ofthe members of the conversation pertaining to the social media message,wherein the indication of the identity of the additional member beingadded to the conversation pertaining to the social media message is notsubmitted in conjunction with a comment on the social media message; andfiltering an information feed of a second one of the members of theconversation pertaining to the social media message such that theinformation feed does not include an indication that the additionalmember has been added as one of the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message.
 14. A method, comprising:obtaining, via a social networking system, a social media message;obtaining, via the social networking system, an indication of anintended recipient of the social media message; processing a sharerequest received via the social networking system, the share requestindicating a request to share the social media message with the intendedrecipient; providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for display at aclient device, the GUI including the social media message, an indicationthat the social media message has been shared with the intendedrecipient, and a user interface element; and responsive to processing anindication of a selection of the user interface element, retrieving,from a database of a database system, information identifying members ofa conversation pertaining to the social media message; and providing alist for display at the client device, the list identifying the membersof the conversation pertaining to the social media message, the membersincluding an author of the social media message, the intended recipientof the social media message, individuals who have been mentioned by oneof the members in association with the social media message, individualswho have mentioned one of the members of the conversation, individualswho have commented on the social media message or a previous comment onthe social media message, and individuals who have liked the socialmedia message, the list being modifiable via interaction with the listor one or more associated user interface elements.
 15. The method ofclaim 14, further comprising: processing a user request to modify thelist identifying the members of the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message; and responsive to processing the user request tomodify the list identifying the members of the conversation pertainingto the social media message, updating, within the database of thedatabase system, the information identifying the members of theconversation pertaining to the social media message according to aresult of processing the request.
 16. The method of claim 15, the methodfurther comprising: determining whether the user has authority to modifythe list identifying the members of the conversation according to theuser request; wherein updating the information is performed according toa result of determining whether the user has authority to modify thelist identifying the members of the conversation according to the userrequest.
 17. The method of claim 14, the method further comprising:processing a request to add an additional member to the list identifyingthe members of the conversation pertaining to the social media message;and responsive to processing the request to add the additional member tothe list, updating, within the database of the database system, theinformation identifying the members of the conversation pertaining tothe social media message such that the information identifies theadditional member; and providing an updated list for display at theclient device, the updated list identifying the members of theconversation pertaining to the social media message, the membersincluding the additional member.
 18. The method of claim 14, the methodfurther comprising: processing a request to remove a particular one ofthe members from the conversation pertaining to the social mediamessage; and responsive to processing the request to remove theparticular one of the members from the conversation pertaining to thesocial media message, updating, within the database of the databasesystem, the information identifying the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message such that the information doesnot identify the particular one of the members; and providing an updatedlist for display at the client device, the updated list identifying themembers of the conversation pertaining to the social media message, theupdated list not identifying the particular one of the members.
 19. Themethod of claim 14, the method further comprising: obtaining, via thesocial networking system, an indication of an identity of an additionalmember being added to the conversation pertaining to the social mediamessage, the indication being submitted by a first one of the members ofthe conversation pertaining to the social media message, wherein theindication of the identity of the additional member being added to theconversation pertaining to the social media message is not submitted inconjunction with a comment on the social media message; and filtering aninformation feed of a second one of the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message such that the information feeddoes not include an indication that the additional member has been addedas one of the members of the conversation pertaining to the social mediamessage.
 20. The method of claim 19, the method further comprising:notifying the first one of the members of the conversation pertaining tothe social media message that feeds of other members of the conversationdo not include an indication that the additional member has been addedto the conversation by the first one of the members of the conversationpertaining to the social media message.